Hubuc

Roger Copuse

(1927 - 13 June 1970, Belgium)

Roger Copuse was a radio technician in the Merchant Navy, and then radio operator on board of Sabena fights between Brussels and New York until the mid 60's. He started making comics under the pen name Hubuc for Spirou in the early 1960s. He made a score of stories in the magazine's "mini-books" section between 1961 and 1967, starring characters like 'Alertogas' and 'Le Bel-Albert', the latter with art by Mike. He also cooperated with Jacques Devos on 'Les Mémoires de Victor Sébastopol' (1963-64) and then made the longer 'Alertogas' stories 'Le Labyrinthe' (1964) and 'Dans le Sillage des Argonautes' (1965) for Spirou's regular pages.

In 1966, he started working for Pilote, where he made series 'L'Aéromédon Populaire' with scripts by Fred. He also wrote the first episodes of 'Tulipe et Minibus' for artist Mike and later Claire Bretécher. From 1968, he made the satirical gag comic 'Le Travail' for the magazine. These gag pages were later collected in the album 'Et Voilà le Travail' at Dargaud.

Hubuc was also present in Tintin magazine as a scriptwrtier for series like 'Poncho Bomba' (artwork by Mike), 'Chlorophylle et Minimum' and 'Wilbur et Mimosa' (both with artwork by Pierre Guilmard). In 1970, he also did the artwork on some short stories starring 'Chlorophylle'. In 1969, he created 'Ces Temps Étaient Dur' in Le Soir Illustré, a supplement of newspaper Le Soir. He passed away from leucemia at the age of 42 in 1970.